Zack Greinke Says He Worked Through Right Shoulder Soreness Last Season

Arizona Diamondbacks right-hander Zack Greinke has been resilient in his three seasons with the club, missing no starts and recording a 45-25 record. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Arizona Diamondbacks ace Zack Greinke opened last season with a sore right shoulder, he told Boomskie on Baseball Sunday at the team’s spring training complex in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Greinke said he came to camp battling the condition last spring and the soreness lasted through the first month of a season the right-hander still finished at 15-11 with a 3.21 ERA.

And then with work and treatment it just went away. Greinke never missed a start, making 33 and tossing 207 2/3 innings, walking just 43 batters.

“I think it was just old age-type stuff,” said Greinke, who’s 35 and beginning his 16th big-league season. “Weird stuff like that has bothered me. My elbow bothered me for something like five years and then it went away.”

Greinke said his elbow hurt beginning in Milwaukee in 2011 and all the way through three years with the Los Angeles Dodgers, including his brilliant 2015 season when he went 19-3 with a league-leading 1.66 ERA and 0.84 WHIP.

That season, Greinke walked just 40 batters in 222 2/3 innings. After it, he opted out of his contract and signed a six-year, $206.5 million deal as a free agent with the D-backs.

Hall of Fame left-hander Tom Glavine said he once pitched an entire season battling a torn rotator cuff. He never had surgery and that injury also miraculously disappeared.

“I think every pitcher has something all the time,” Greinke said. “When I came here [the elbow] felt fine. It was kind of weird.”

Greinke arrived at camp Saturday with permission two days late and said he feels much better this year than at this time last. He had some slight neck stiffness, but that dissipated Sunday as he worked out.

The revamped D-backs are going to need vintage Greinke if they expect to make another run at the playoffs in the National League. In his first three Arizona seasons, Greinke was 45-25 with a 3.53 ERA in 91 starts. Like many pitchers his age, he's dealing with a loss of velocity on his fastball by compensating throwing strikes with secondary pitches.

"I couldn't feel much better than I do right now," he told reporters Saturday. "That doesn't mean I'm going to be better than the last couple of years when the season comes. It just means I feel good right now compared to at this time last season, when I felt terrible."

That begged the obvious question. What felt terrible?

“My arm,” he told the group Sunday after throwing a 35-pitch bullpen session without incident.

Greinke was asked to explain his arm problems in more detail after the scrum had ended.

“It just hurt all the time,” he said. “The shoulder more so.”

How did he get through it?

“I don’t know. It started getting better eventually. I just sort of started feeling better about a month into the season,” he said.

He’s never had a debilitating arm injury in his career, only missing most of the 2006 season with the Kansas City Royals because of depression.

But the shoulder soreness explains why Greinke made only three spring training starts in 2018, accruing just 2 2/3 innings in Cactus League action until a six-inning March 26 stint against the Cleveland Indians.

He made one start from Feb. 25 to March 26.

“I threw my first one and maybe my second one and then I got hurt,” Greinke said.

The D-backs held Greinke until the regular season’s third game, a 2-1 loss March 31 at Chase Field to the Colorado Rockies.

As Greinke said, that’s when he began to work through it, pitching well enough against Colorado, allowing a run on five hits with no walks and nine strikeouts. But he then allowed nine runs on 14 hits in back-to-back games at St. Louis and Los Angeles.

After the soreness cleared up, Greinke had brilliant months of June and July, going 9-1 with a 2.31 ERA, his best run of the season.

But the point is, he’s healthy now after his first official bullpen of the spring. He had thrown 40 pitches in another ‘pen last week before camp opened.

“I felt good. It felt fine. I threw a lot of strikes. All the pitches were OK,” he said. “I probably would have thrown a little more, but I have to throw again in a couple of days. I didn’t want to throw too much. I’ll probably throw a little more next time.”

About the neck, he added: “It loosened up. It was good enough.”

Barry M. Bloom is a contributing columnist for Forbes.com. He can be found on Twitter at @boomskie.